Klein v. Caterpillar Inc.

• Citation: 581 F.Supp.3d 912
• Decision Date: 12 January 2022
• Docket Number: Case No. 1:21-cv-11748
• Parties: Jill KLEIN, deceased, BY her Personal Representative, Brent KLEIN, Plaintiff, v. CATERPILLAR INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

581 F.Supp.3d 912

Jill KLEIN, deceased, BY her Personal Representative, Brent KLEIN, Plaintiff,

v.CATERPILLAR INC., Defendant.

Case No. 1:21-cv-11748

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Northern Division.

Signed January 12, 2022

Ellen G. Schreuder, Mancini, Schreuder, Warren, MI, for Plaintiff.

Michael B. Hunter, Williams Venker Sanders LLC, St. Louis, MO, Victor T. Van Camp, King, Tilden, McEttrick & Brink, P.C., Livonia, MI, for Defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO AMEND COMPLAINT AND DENYING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS

THOMAS L. LUDINGTON, United States District Judge

This matter is before this Court upon Plaintiff Brent Klein's Motion to Amend the Complaint and Defendant Caterpillar, Inc.’s Motion to Dismiss. For the reasons explained hereafter, Plaintiff's Motion will be granted, and Defendant's Motion will be denied.

I.

This case involves Plaintiff's negligence and products-liability claims, arising from the November 3, 2018 death of Jill Klein ("Decedent") in Mackinac County, Michigan. Decedent was killed when a Caterpillar mining hauler crushed her parked truck in a rock quarry. Because this case is at the 12(b)(6) stage, very little is known about the underlying facts, including: the specific circumstance of the accident; the mining hauler's owner; and Plaintiff's relationship to Decedent.

A.

In 2015, nonparty Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Inc. paid Defendant $1,075,252.00 for a Caterpillar Certified Rebuild Upgrade (CCRU) of a Caterpillar 785B mining hauler.¹ ECF No. 17 at PageID.39 (citing ECF No. 17-4 at PageID.53–58). Caterpillar performed the CCRU in accordance with its own "Special Instruction" manual. Id. at PageID.39–40 (citing ECF No. 17-5 at PageID.60–160).

On November 3, 2018, Decedent was working an overnight shift at Carmeuse's quarry in Cedarville, Michigan. Id. at PageID.39. One of Decedent's coworkers was driving a load of rock in the Caterpillar 785B mining hauler, id. , which weighs between 210,000 and 550,000 pounds depending on the load. While Decedent sat in the driver's seat of her Ford F150 truck, the Caterpillar hauler drove over her, crushing the truck and ending her life. Id.

B.

On July 29, 2021, on behalf of Decedent, Plaintiff filed a complaint against Defendant, alleging one count of negligent failure to repair and update and one count of breach of warranty to properly repair and maintain. ECF No. 1. Because the initial complaint did not "assert the grounds supporting ... jurisdiction" or indicate Plaintiff's domicile, on August 5, 2021, District Judge Mark Goldsmith directed Plaintiff to "file an amended complaint curing the above-mentioned defects." ECF No. 3 at PageID.6–7. On August 12, 2021, Plaintiff filed his first amended complaint, alleging the same two counts. ECF No. 4.

On September 20, 2021, the parties stipulated to "transfer th[e] case to the Northern Division of the Eastern District of Michigan," because "Plaintiff resides in Montmorency County." ECF No. 8 at PageID.15. Before the case was transferred, the parties stipulated that Plaintiff would "file a Second Amended Complaint with a more definite allegation of claims against Defendant," ECF No. 11 at PageID.22, which Plaintiff filed on September 30, 2021, ECF No. 10.

On October 14, 2021, Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint. ECF No. 12. On the same day, Judge Goldsmith granted the parties’ stipulated motion for a change of division assignment under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(b) and LR 83.10, and then the case was reassigned to the undersigned. ECF No. 13.

On November 18, 2021, Plaintiff filed a response to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss, to which Defendant replied on December 2, 2021. ECF Nos. 17; 19. Plaintiff's response included a third amended complaint as an exhibit. ECF No. 17-6.

On December 17, 2021, Plaintiff filed a motion to amend the complaint, requesting that this Court approve the filing of his previously attached third amended complaint. ECF No. 20.

C.

Plaintiff's second amended complaint alleges a negligence claim and a products-liability claim against Defendant. ECF No. 10.

Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss stating that Plaintiff's second amended complaint fails for two independent reasons:

(1) "Plaintiffs’ claims ... are all based on a failure modify to or retrofit the earth hauler in some way," which is a duty not recognized under Michigan law; and (2) "Paragraph 8(i) of the Second Amended Complaint also purports to state a claim for ‘otherwise breaching duties owed,’ " which "does not meet the notice pleading standard of Rule 8(a) because it provides no notice at all to Caterpillar what duties it is alleged to have breached." ECF No. 12 at PageID.24. Defendant elaborates that "a manufacturer is under no duty to modify its product in accordance with the current state of the art safety features." Id. at PageID.28–29 (citing Gregory v. Cincinnati Inc. , 450 Mich. 1, 538 N.W.2d 325 (1995) ). "Thus," Defendant adds, "there is only one type of very narrow post-manufacture duty recognized in the state of Michigan: the duty to warn when the alleged defect existed at the point of manufacture, but for some reason was undiscoverable by both the manufacturer and the consumer at the time." Id. at PageID.29 (first citing Gregory , 538 N.W.2d at 331–32 ; and then citing Ray v. Rheem Textile Sys. , No. 225934, 2002 WL 433157, at *5 (Mich. Ct. App. Mar. 19, 2002) (per curiam) (unpublished)). By contrast, Defendant explains, "Plaintiffs merely allege that [Defendant] had a duty in repairing, modifying, and updating the earth hauler in a way to prevent injury and ‘to observe all duties imposed by law.’ " Id. (quoting ECF No. 10 at PageID.19). "Further," Defendant concludes, "Plaintiffs have not alleged that [Defendant] assumed a duty to make the repairs or modifications listed in Paragraph 8 of the Second Amended Complaint." Id. at PageID.30.

Plaintiff agrees with Defendant that there is no "affirmative duty to perform repairs" under Michigan law. ECF No. 17 at PageID.37. Even so, Plaintiff contends, because Defendant voluntarily repaired the mining hauler, "it had an ongoing duty of care to perform [t]hat work reasonably and safely." Id. at PageID.38.

Defendant first replies that, rather than Defendant, it was FABCO CAT, "an authorized, wholly independent dealer for [Defendant's] products," that performed the CCRU. ECF No. 19 at PageID.180. Defendant alleges that Plaintiff has therefore failed to state a claim, because "FABCO CAT was separately incorporated from [Defendant] and was not a parent, subsidiary, or sister corporation to [Defendant]," and because Defendant "did not perform or charge for the modification and repairs." Id. Second, Defendant replies that "the 2015 rebuild FABCO CAT performed did not include the safety features Plaintiff now alleges were missing." Id. at PageID.181. As Defendant adds, FABCO CAT performed a Certified Rebuild (CCR), not a "Certified Rebuild Upgrade " (CCRU). Id. (emphasis in original). Even so, Defendant explains, the instructions for neither the CCR nor the CCRU reference the "additional, modified, or enhanced safety features" that "Plaintiff claims should have been added to the haul truck in 2015 as part of the rebuild." Id. at PageID.182. For these reasons, Defendant concludes that it "undertook no duty to modify or repair and did not modify or repair the equipment at issue." Id.

Plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint adds Count III, which replaces Count I's allegation of a duty "to exercise due care and caution in the repair, modification, and updating of the earth hauler," with a duty "to exercise due care and caution in the design, manufacture, and distribution of the earth hauler." Compare ECF No. 10 at PageID.19 (emphasis added), with ECF No. 17-6 at PageID.174 (same), and ECF No. 20-1 at PageID.302 (same). In this way, Count III clarifies the products-liability claim, which this Court discerned from Count I of the second amended complaint.

See ECF No. 17 at PageID.40 ("Plaintiff also plans to seek leave to file a Third Amended Complaint, which will identify which of those deficiencies could have and should have been corrected with available technology in 1998 ....").

As indicated in his response to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss, Plaintiff also requests leave to file his Third Amended Complaint. See ECF No. 20. Specifically, Plaintiff seeks leave "to more clearly reflect the pending issues." Id. at PageID.296. Plaintiff sought but did not receive Defendant's concurrence. Id. Plaintiff believes that this Court should grant leave because "justice so requires." Id. (citing FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a)(2) ). Defendant has filed a timely response, ECF No. 21. See E.D. Mich. LR 7.1(e)(2).

II.

A.

A court "should freely give leave" to amend "when justice so requires." FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a)(2) ; Foman v. Davis , 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962) ("In the absence of any apparent or declared reason ... the leave sought should, as the rules require, be ‘freely given.’ "). Justice does not require leave to amend in the presence of "[u]ndue delay in filing, lack of notice to the opposing party, bad faith by the moving party, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by previous amendments, undue prejudice to the opposing party, [or] futility of amendment." Glob. Lift Corp. v. Hiwin Corp. , No. 14-CV-12200, 2016 WL 5476238, at *3 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 29, 2016). To that end, the decision to grant or deny leave to amend is "left to the sound discretion of the trial judge." Id. ; see also Parchman v. SLM Corp. , 896 F.3d 728, 736 (6th Cir. 2018) ("[T]he case law in this Circuit manifests liberality in allowing amendments to a complaint." (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); Moore v. City of Paducah , 790 F.2d 557, 559 (6th Cir. 1986) (per curiam) ("[T]he thrust of Rule 15 is to reinforce the principle that cases ‘should be tried on their merits rather than the technicalities of pleadings.’ " (quoting Tefft v. Seward , 689 F.2d 637, 639...